Improving GDP nowcasts with alternative aviation data

Barney Bruce-Smythe, Senior Associate (London)

Post feature

Are we in a recession? The answer is often discovered too late, with official figures published at a substantial lag. In this literature review, we discuss a paper that analyses the integration of alternative aviation data to improve GDP nowcasting. The authors reduce their nowcast’s mean absolute error (MAE) by 30% for the US and assess the utility of other high-frequency alternative data sources.

LITERATURE

We discuss the 2020 paper titled…